The Little Lies That Keep Work Unfair
- Courtney Branson
- Nov 25
- 9 min read
Dear Readers,
Today, I want to get real about compensation and why improving society’s wealth inequity includes improving our compensation philosophies.
I grew up lower-middle-class, and after two decades of clawing up the social hierarchy, I’m at best upper-middle-class. But I don’t know how long that lasts.
What I see around me is the middle collapsing — CEOs and those at the top taking larger and larger cuts, hollowing out the jobs and wages that once sustained whole families.
We tell people there’s a meritocracy, that hard work pays off, but the truth is, you can work hard and still not have enough to live. If we want to fix inequality, we have to fix work.
To fix work, we have to question the little lies we tell ourselves.
I’ve seen inequity up close; I’ve lived it. I watched the difference between my salary and my male peers multiply for nearly two decades.
I ate the excuses I was told. The narrative circled a common theme — if I didn’t want my job, someone else did, and plenty of folks could do it.
All the excuses distracted me from the system and forced ownership onto me.
I believed that if I worked harder, then the money would come. It was a little lie I told myself. I needed to believe that I was in a fair system; otherwise, what was the point?
Those in power rely on the little lies; on us believing we just have to work a little harder. But that wasn’t necessarily true.
Reality is — we’re baked by and baked into our societal systems and biases, which underpin everything we touch, including work and pay. Even our compensation data carries biased narratives. We’re so molded by these biases that they don’t feel like biases; sometimes they feel like facts.
When these biases are said as facts, it impacts compensation, which is something everyone in power should be fighting against.
The first time I witnessed compensation decisions was by happenstance. My manager was on parental leave, so I attended discussions of the inner circle to take notes. I was horrified.
Stereotypes, personal vendettas, manager preferences, and every reason other than talent were laid on the table.
I heard commentary on who did or didn’t deserve raises based on familial status. It was always men who deserved it, while mothers to school-age children or pregnant women didn’t, because surely they were less dedicated (aka the motherhood penalty). 🤮
I watched bonuses be withheld due to spite over one misstep, personality clashes, or a manager's ego and insecurities.
It was nothing to them. They denied increases and slashed bonuses without question, while also passing out raises and promotions with flowery stories of “earning it.” There was no logic, structure, or standard.
I couldn’t fathom why leaders making a cool mill in cash would nickel and dime their teams for frivolous reasons. Yet, it happens all the time.
After two decades at companies as small as 40 and as big as 40,000, I’ve seen how these practices and gaps tear at cultures. Compensation is a personal, basic need that, until we have a universal basic income or fair federal wage standards, employees rely on companies to meet.
So, when there’s no sense of fairness, structure, or rhyme and reason to compensation decisions, the consequences are exactly what you’d expect: resentment, fear, exhaustion.
Not only does this detract from the work, but it’s these practices that reinforce the gender pay gap. A gap that widened again in 2024 for the second year in a row.
The gender pay gap is not going to be fixed by blaming women.
All too often, the “fix” for systemic issues is to place the burden on the harmed party. So, instead of examining why women are paid less, we tell women they need to negotiate better or pursue higher-paying roles.
Negotiation isn’t an easy fix.
Women now negotiate more than men, but still end up earning less in comparable roles — largely due to lower starting offers and higher rejection rates. Those requests also come with a higher rate of backlash — women are perceived as difficult for asking for more money. It’s the negative social cost of negotiation.
And it’s also not as easy as funneling more women into higher-paying roles.
This is touted as the fastest way to make progress on the gender wage gap. And it works to an extent, but once a role tips into feminine, it will lose pay relative to other fields. Those declines are not due to skills or an increased supply of candidates but rather lower prestige.
In fact, a fifty-year study found strong support for the theory that the decline is due to a devaluation of “women’s work.” So, I posit that our energy should go into questioning why we devalue the work of women.
For centuries, society has treated women’s labor — physical, emotional, and intellectual as less valuable. That bias doesn’t disappear when women enter new fields. Whether it’s a female engineer paid less than her peers or an entire field like HR losing status as women dominate it, the pattern is the same: anything women touch, the market values less.
This is gendered valuation drift, where the value of work is systematically undervalued or overvalued due to gender bias and social stereotypes.
It’s why we assign higher worth to technical fields — not because they’re harder, but because they’ve historically been male-dominated. Exceptions tend to be for individuals who adopt or naturally possess masculine energy, while bias intensifies for women of color and mothers.
As a further blow to women’s pay, since we earn less on average, families often default to women shouldering caregiving. The pay gap makes that decision appear economical, but it’s self-perpetuating: undervaluing women’s work inside the market pushes them into unpaid work outside it.
Our systems are still conspiring to keep women out of the workplace, which means the ethical burden on leaders and compensation analysts is high.
These inequities are deep-rooted and often manifest in ways that feel reasonable or individualized. But there’s no amount of courses, articles, or advice on negotiation or career selection that will solve this problem.
Even with advice and insider knowledge, I still got ensnared by compensation inequity as an executive in a female-dominated field.
I’ve lost out on an estimated $750,000 (not including equity) compared to my male peers. At first, it felt salvageable; I told myself that little lie — work harder to make it up. But the distance between me and others snowballed.
For one, I was already at a deficit. Any percentage-based increases or bonuses, even if consistently applied, still kept me under-compensated. It also took me longer to earn promotions. I had to not only do the role before the promotion, but I had to be perfect at it. This is the “broken rung” or “potential v. proof” problem, where unconscious bias promotes men based on potential and women based on proof, exacerbating the gender pay gap.
And the burden of proof can be so high. One time, a founder postponed my promotion because of my “fragility” — a reference to a day I was sad because my dog had just died. A moment of humanness cost me the raise.
It’s not just me. The National Women’s Law Center found that based on today’s gender wage gap for full-time, year-round workers, women stand to lose $462,000 over the course of a 40-year career. For Black women, Latinas, Indigenous women, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander women, the losses are over $1 million over a lifetime.
Over $1 million over a lifetime. That’s life-changing money, and it’s why we have to start getting compensation right.
The role of compensation is much more than data analysis; it’s salvation.
It’s historically been taboo to talk about money, which allowed companies to shroud inequities, biases, and, honestly, a lot of wackiness.
As a counterbalance, I’ve supported companies over the past decade to embrace pay transparency and equity. Pay transparency throws open the curtains. When everyone can see the salaries of each person and level, then the conversations can start. Those are conversations worth having.
It’s not going to be perfect, especially for companies that have skeletons (ahem — counteroffers) that they’ll now have to account for. The cumulative choices may be questioned and require reparations, but pay transparency is a long-term commitment.
It’s about equitable access to information and opportunity, as well as permission to hold leadership accountable to a fair system. Right now, you may be thinking that sounds scary, but here’s why it’s not — It’s about trust.
With pay transparency, teams don’t have to worry about salary negotiations or if a peer is paid differently for the same work. It removes the emotional labor around compensation, especially for historically disadvantaged individuals. That positively cascades into the company culture.
Mercer found that only 3 in 10 companies embed transparency into their compensation practices, which is a missed opportunity because employees who are paid fairly are 85% more engaged and 62% more committed at work. The concept of fair is often about perception and access.
Transparency into pay, promotions, growth opportunities, and company viability is a cure to cynicism, skepticism, and the rumor mill.
And yes, you’ll have hard conversations, because transparency cultivates openness and that open forum invites scrutiny, but I promise it beats behind-the-scenes festering and frustration.
Plus, by ensuring transparent, equitable, and livable pay to others, you get to make the world better because it ripples into every aspect of someone’s life.
So, here’s what I’d do first to build a transparent, equitable, and livable comp philosophy.
Root in dignity.
Begin with the belief that pay is not a prize for performance but the exchange for someone’s time, energy, and expertise. The goal is a dignified wage — one that allows people to exhale and thrive, not just scrape by.
Lead with transparency.
Transparency is accountability. Share the data, the process, the philosophy. It’s how you signal that equity isn’t a secret, it’s a system everyone can see.
Build a model.
Since benchmarked data reflects historical bias, use market data as a reference, not gospel. Anchor minimum pay to the cost of living and what it takes for a family to thrive in your region. Set your baseline, then use common sense to increase pay based on leveling.
Simplify leveling.
Level the role, not the person. For a startup, I’d create three levels that align pay to scope, influence, impact, and risk. (I would not include whether a role is perceived as “technical” or not in the factors.)
Early career: still learning, low risk, work supported by others.
Mid-career: self-sufficient, mentors others, accountable to outcomes.
Senior: leads strategy, high influence, high-risk decisions.
The number of and differentiation between levels will grow with scale.
Team as the measure
Instead of entangling compensation, reviews, and meritocracy, give every employee an annual cost-of-living bump for unity over competition. It’s a promise that if you’re part of the team, you’re part of its progress. If someone’s not contributing to collective growth, that will become clear and addressed outside of compensation.
Audit the skeletons.
Correct inequities directly and privately by examining who’s underpaid or overpaid and why. That could mean retroactive adjustments or, if someone’s overpaid, pausing future increases until the benchmark catches up — but hold that conversation with compassion. The problem isn’t the person; it’s the system that allowed the imbalance.
End negotiation.
In my experience, it’s always the offer negotiations that undo pay equity. Set the pay for the role before you meet the candidates, and don’t negotiate. Counteroffers and exceptions break trust. If someone gets another offer, stick to your ethos and wish them well.
Make promotions public.
Allow anyone to request a level review. Alongside every approved promotion, provide a brief explaining why — the contributions, growth, and impact that led to it. It creates shared meaning for advancement and opens the door for conversation.
Communicate openly.
Announce early that you’re moving toward pay transparency and invite feedback. Explain the philosophy and own past mistakes. As a cautionary tale, reinforce early that transparency about company systems and pay doesn’t mean full transparency into individual stories or performance.
Transparency is fragile at first — handle it with empathy.
Underpin compensation with an inclusive culture.
Pay equity can’t exist in isolation. The same principles of transparency, dignity, and fairness need to guide how growth is supported, how feedback is given, and how mistakes are treated. Otherwise, even transparent pay becomes a mirror of old inequities.
Here are some creative policy ideas to foster wealth and career advancement:
Offer letters that lay out additional pay like scheduled increases, bonuses, structured rest, or profit-sharing, as well as pre-determined separation pay and extended timelines to exercise equity.
Performance previews instead of performance reviews. These would focus on what everyone is agreeing on for a future promotion — always looking forward, not back.
Lastly, I want to see leaders closing the gap by giving themselves salary caps. There’s no scenario where a CEO should make more than 5x the lowest-paid employee.
Fair pay won’t fix everything, but it’s where repair begins. It’s where a company can become a place that honors not just what people produce, but who they are.
I want something different for my company.
I know compensation changes lives. So, as a founder, I plan to cap my compensation at 3x and guarantee a livable wage for stability and dignity.
Choosing to share wealth positively ripples into families and communities. Work is a place where we either perpetuate scarcity or create possibility.
Compensation is the place to start.
xoxo,
Courtney
Courtney Branson is the cofounder of EverMore, the workplace reflection engine. She's a former Chief People Officer and will forever be designing kind and innovative cultures. You can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and as the cohost of the Dear Evermore podcast.
